Things have been progressing well this evening (knock on wood.) Maybe it's because it has such a bad rap and I was expecting the worst, but thus far I don't hate Windows 8. It's certainly weird, and it will never replace what MacOS does in my life. As the front end of a Wintendo, it's fine. With the three stock case fans as well as the CPU and GPU fans, it's still pretty quiet. This Fractal case is beefy and seems to keep a fair amount of the noise inside.
I had to hit Windows with hammer in order to get it to do a clean install, but that ended up being relatively painless.
Right now I am installing a few games on Steam, to see how they run. I have to sort out getting Windows to like my USB audio interface, so I can get the mic working and yell at Colin use in-game chat.